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Johnny Jewel – Windswept

The moment I heard the title track on David Lynch’s masterpiece, Twin Peaks: The Return, I knew Johnny Jewel had left the electro-dance of his Chromatics project far behind. This is beguiling, smoky, jazz-infused psychedelia.

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Nosaj Thing – Parallels

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Gabriel Saloman – Movement Building vol. 3

The former half of Yellow Swans continues his streak of intricately crafted, asteroid-blasted music that defies genre categorization. Come for the shoegaze peals, the drone washes, the arpeggios, the noise, and stay for his most comprehensive statement yet.

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Daphni – Joli Mai

Caribou’s Dan Snaith has jumped to a new moniker to celebrate another radical shift in sound, elevating his beats to pure club atmospheres but keeping the widescreen cinematic glow of his production. It sounds timeless already.

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Sun Ra – The Space Age is Here to Stay

Another year, another Sun Ra compilation, right? Well, this time most of the songs are never-before-released or otherwise very obscure, even to devoted fans of the celestial jazz god. Running from 1958 through 1985, these songs lean more toward accessible, even including a non-curse-filled version of Nuclear War.

Seb Wildblood – The One With the Emoticon

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Destroyer – Ken

Destroyer’s unique brand of immaculately designed, flawlessly delivered pop continues on from the blueprint established by 2011’s Kaputt. If you dig his deadpan narratives already, you should own this too.

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Bing & Ruth – No Home of the Mind

This album is a bespoke set of endlessly disarming, hauntingly gorgeous live-action ambient tunes. It’s a sort of hushed, gentle take on modern classical chamber music, but more spacey, more transcendent.

Milo – Who told you to think​?​?​!​!​?​!​?​!​?​!

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Brainwaltzera – Poly Ana

This is the album that sounds like 90s IDM superheroes made their own Justice League or something. Big shades of Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, and Boards of Canada. The creator is a mystery, so maybe it is one of them?

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The Bug vs Earth – Concrete Desert

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Ahnnu – Special Forces

Ahnnu returns with more stripped-down weird elegance, a set of songs that label NNA Tapes described perfectly: “maximum effects from minimal presence.” He seems to boil down the essence of a complex set of elements and then build his music by smearing their residue on a canvas.

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Laurel Halo – Dust

The enigmatic, experimental Laurel Halo returned with something more alien, yet more recognizably “Laurel Halo” than ever before. This is experimental, sure, but almost encroaching on Björk territory in terms of tunefulness.

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M.E.S.H. – Hesaitix

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L’Rain – L’Rain

L’Rain makes dreamlike, jazzy soul music, fueled by the experimental krautrock energy of Broadcast and Stereolab. This is her first and only release and I can’t wait to hear where she goes in the future.

Suryummy – Photon Slobber

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DJ Python – Dulce Compañia

I have no doubt in my mind that, if I hadn’t heard this the final week of December, it’d be in my top 20 albums of the year at least. Sumptuous, meditative techno. He calls it “deep reggaeton” and I can’t disagree.

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So that’s it! Thank you for reading. I hope you found some music to love. I know I did. As always, my favorites shift and grow and change right until the last minute, several of these could have been on my main 50 best albums of 2017 list. It doesn’t matter though; I just want to spread the word about these great artists. I can’t wait for the next year’s crop of brilliant music.

3 thoughts on “50 More Must-Hear Albums of 2017”

I recently found your site, and I just have to say: you have incredible taste. Some of this stuff I’ve found on my own, but you’ve introduced me to a TON of stuff that I would have otherwise missed. Loving the lush, atmosphere, deep house vibes the most. Thank you for keeping this up.